Advances in health care have helped to dramatically increase the lifespan of patients and their quality of life through the development of more effective treatments, medication, and medical technologies. However, one of the leading causes of medical patient readmission and patient fatalities is accidental patient or caregiver non-compliance with medication administration. Many patients often forget to take their medication, take too many doses of their medication, take their medication in an incorrect interval, or take the wrong medication. Additionally, patients do not keep a log of their medication intake. Incorrect administration of medication in the prescribed method can lead to serious medical complications, higher medical costs, and death. Most patients do not even keep a good medication intake log to help provide assistance in medical diagnosis. Even when patients use calendars, a caregiver, their own memory or other methods to help remind them to take a particular medication on time, there is no easy and automated way for them to verify if they are taking the correct medication or dosage. There is no easy way for a health care provider to track if their patients are taking their medication in the manner that they were prescribed. There is no easy and automated way for healthcare providers to immediately modify or cancel medication orders or for pharmaceutical manufactures to recall a medication after patient or caregivers have possession of the medication. Also, there is no easy or automated way for healthcare providers to alert patients who have taken a recalled pharmaceutical of the potential danger to the patients' lives.
Therefore it is the object of the present invention to provide a medication guidance system and method that facilitates the proper administration of medication. A medication blister cassette is used to store a medication package, wherein the medication blister cassette includes a cassette microcomputer that is able to directly retrieve a prescription profile from the medication package. The cassette microcomputer utilizes medication information from the prescription profile to generate a medication administration schedule that is used to notify a user of when to administer medication in the medication package. When the medication is to be administered, the cassette microcomputer displays the medication information through a user interaction assembly and activates a compartment light for a specific blister housing compartments from a plurality of blister housing compartments. The cassette microcomputer logs all activities of the user and can share the logged activities with an electronic device, such as a user computer or a database center, allowing a third party to monitor the administration of the medication.
The present invention is also useful for inventory management in hospital and other institutional settings. Multiple medication blister cassettes can be stored on shelves, such as in a cabinet, or in a mobile cart, wherein the medication blister cassettes are accessible to authorized personnel in order to control administration of the medication. Each medication blister cassette can be for a specific patient, multiple patients, a specific medication, multiple medications, etc. When medication is administered to patients by authorized personnel, the administration of the medication doses is recorded by the medication blister cassette and shared with the institution's database in order to maintain an inventory of the medication. This also prevents theft, as only authorized personnel are able to access the medication in the medication blister cassettes.
Furthermore, the present invention can be used to communicate with a designated caregiver (e.g. family member, nurse), physician, or pharmacist. This can be used to notify the caregiver, physician, or pharmacist when the user of the present invention does not acknowledge administration of a medication dose, cancels administration, or administers a dose that was cancelled by the physician or pharmacist. The present invention can also be used to request consultation or emergency consultation from the caregiver, physician, or pharmacist through the medication blister. Yet another communicable use of the present invention is the ability for the user to re-order medication by communicating with the physician or pharmacist through the medication blister cassette.